Couple of things.
1) I love SFB. Love it. I don't wish it on anyone, but I love the game. Just an incredible game. I don't think there is a board game as rich as SFB. ASL, maybe, but where ASL has detail, I think it lack the depth, balance and timing of SFB. Watching veteran, expert SFB players play is a wonder to behold.
2) Aramis said: "FF&S1/2 is too hard... the error rates alone prove that."
I would like to comment on error rate. Specifically, exactly whom does this error rate hurt? And what kinds of errors are we talking about? Error is important in a competitive game, where an error can give one side or the other and advantage. But in an RPG? I agree its frustrating when the vendor publishes "bad designs" that can't be recreated with the design sequence, but if they're used mostly for the narrative look and feel of the design rather than the hard numbers of the design, then errors aren't really that important. Do we really need to know the intimate details of the ship Serenity?
I mean, look at the classic 200 ton Free Trader. Everyone loves the FT. Why? Because it's a great size ship for a RPG party of friends sitting around a table, and it's a great mechanic to get the players in and out of trouble.
But there have been simply thousands of words discussing the problems with the FT design, some which may actually be a design problem, others may be a trade system problem, etc. Even with a perfect, down to the liter design sequence, the FT is a flawed design if literally plugged in to the OTU as is.
NONETHELESS, it is a staple.
Same with the Scout. Regardless of how "wrong" the scout deckplans are, etc., they are a great game device. The ship LOOKS great, the plans LOOK great, and even work well. Any player looks at a Scout ship hungrily as it just seethes adventure.
When a player is designing a ship, they're really interested in those factors mentioned earlier.
Capacity, free space, operational costs, effect in combat. But if a referee designs a "bad" ship, even with FF&S, odds are it's not that broken. The ship doesn't instantly become munchkin food, as no design sequence can prevent that. The ship is as playable as the ref's and players imagination wants it to be.
I don't know of an FF&S ship that's missing any significant component necessary for play. Why? Because the ref would have noticed it missing and crammed it in the design somplace, somehow. Maybe the price is wrong, or the tonnage is off. In any case, if it was grossly off, then the designer would have probably noticed it and studiously checked his calculations. And if it was marginally off, then odds are it doesn't affect play in any dramatic form.
A basic RPG tenet is simply that no design will leave out anything important to the game, because that's what the design is built around in the first place.
Sure, errors can perhaps frustrate efforts to share a design with others. But most of the time, again, the importance of the design in the idea behind it rather than the cold hard facts and numbers that make it up, in an RPG setting.
Another RPG tenet is that all conflicts are mostly predestined. There's random luck, players get themselves in trouble, but very few referees will let good meaning and well behaved players get destroyed because of a design error, or even a bad dice roll. If a pirate ship is firing to cripple a player ship, then the ship may escape with a lucky die roll, but regardless of the dice roll, that ship isn't going to get destroyed by dumb luck.
"WOW! a lucky shot! Double crit, ship explodes -- you're all dead! Huh. Who'da thought. 100 to 1 that. Oh well, let's go home, we'll roll new characters next time. They were supposed to capture you and take you to their base where you hijack another ship and get away. But, I guess not. Another 2 months down the drain."
That's why GM screens were invented.
So, if you're "playing Traveller to win", then a detailed design sequence is important in order to give folks a breadth of technique and strategies to try and employ. But for RPG designs for RPG sake, it's much less important IMHO.
I still do not understand why a Book 2 system can not come out of and be roughly compatbile with a FF&S system. I look at the weapon socket concept of TNE, and the assorted plug-and-play turrets they had to fit in them and see that extended to drives, plants, and hull sizes. Round off the corners about 10% give or take and, perhaps, stick to a small ship sequence, and I think you can have an easy to use modular system on top of a more detailed system.
